Helmand Province

As ever, my hon. Friend makes a valuable point. When I returned to Lashkar Gah some 18 months after leaving, I was encouraged by the fact that we could get out, which we simply could not have done when he and I went with the Defence Committee. That in itself shows progress, so we should be encouraged. Let us be clear about that. From talking with local tribesmen and members of community councils—the very people charged with coming up with the community development plans—it became clear to me that a bottom-up approach is being taken in an effort to understand what local tribesmen want, so hon. Members should be encouraged. However, progress is painfully slow, and we need to focus on where it will make the principal difference. I listened to what my hon. Friend said, and believe firmly that DFID should focus its efforts at the local and provincial levels. Before the Minister responds to the debate, I should like to make one point about the counter-narcotics police, as that is another area in which the Government need to be a little cleverer about how they support local Afghan organisations. We went to see the head of the counter-narcotics police, who turned the air-conditioning on especially for us. They had so little diesel that they could not afford to run the air-conditioning or their local trucks. They had been funded directly by the British Government, but an artificial timeline had been set so that, from the end of March, all the funding that had come directly from the British Government stopped. We had decided that, by that time, the necessary infrastructure and capacity would have been built up within the relevant Ministry—the Ministry of Justice, I think—and the Afghan Government, so the money was diverted to Kabul in the hope that it would filter down to the provinces and local commanders. However, capacity had not been built into the national system and the money was not coming through. All the sterling efforts of the local commander had gone to pot because he could not get the diesel through his own system, because our Government had decided, completely artificially, that 31 March was the date that funding would stop. That is a clear example of how we need to be a bit smarter when deciding how to help people in Helmand. Artificial deadlines are based on an assumption that capacity will have been built in the provinces, and that simply is not happening. We need to reconsider what is happening there, as that is only one of many examples of how we need to do better.